Neda

I don’t mind saying in this day of shit-awful Stallone, Willis, and Schwarzenegger movies, NRA buffoons and Death Scenes videos that I am not at all desensitized to violence and horror.  Been feeling fucked up all day after watching the footage of Neda Agha-Soltan dying in Tehran.  One of the most horrible things I’ve ever seen.  The girl falls to the ground, her face still alive for just a moment, a look of numb shock, and then her eyes roll back, and blood streams out of her mouth.  Then her nose.  People start screaming and crying.  There’s blood pouring out everywhere as a guy starts CPR, and you realize, when her eyes rolled back, that was actually it - that was the moment she died.  Violence, this awful violence, and then death. Eyes back, blood all over her face, people screaming and crying. You're watching this young woman's last seconds as a living being.

I try and leave everyone alone to do their own thing, and do my own thing, but so often it seems like we’re not happy unless we’re inflicting misery and suffering upon our own.  It’s this feeding off the pain of our own that leaves me wondering why it’s worth it.  Any of it.  I don’t get any kicks from watching a lion attack, kill, and eat a zebra in a National Geographic special, but I understand it.  The lion isn’t a sadist.  He’s not out to inflict horror on zebras because he’s a heartless, cruel sociopath.  It’s what he needs to do to survive.  It’s the order of the food chain.  My fourth-grade teacher explained that one to me, and I understood it.  The lion didn’t eat another lion.  He ate a zebra.  The bald eagle didn’t attack another bald eagle; it went fishing.

Today I watched the footage of Neda, and when it was over, I sat back in my chair, and thought, Jesus, is this the best we could do today?  There have been days when the best, the very best I had to offer was drinking four beers, jacking off, and laying in bed pondering the career arc of John Agar. Days like those were certainly nothing to be proud of, but what the fuck?  They were benign enough.  Nobody got hurt.  The next morning everything reset.  You could aim a little higher at 8am the next day. 

When the best we can do is seek power, seek wealth, allow our base instincts to guide our actions, and take pleasure in fucking with people, causing them pain, anguish, misery…

It’s amazing anyone can carry on.  It’s amazing every last one of us isn’t on prozac, seeing a shrink, hanging themselves in a closet.  In fact, I start understanding those who believe that they’re being abducted by the greys; those who believe a shadow government controls and crafts everything that happens on earth, even the seemingly random events; those who believe that the world will end in 2012; those who believe an invisible man lives in the sky, keeping tabs on everything they do, casting them off into the fires of eternal damnation if they break his rules.  It’s running and hiding, no doubt, but it begins to have a certain logic to it.  How to take it head on when we we’re so cruel to each other?  There’s no real answer. This is How It Is.

 

Green trees call to me

I am free – but life is so cheap…